The truth is, most of the novels we see in print have been edited by professional editors who work for the publishing houses. And those that haven't been edited are relatively easy to spot.
If you look at the acknowledgement sections of published novels, most of the writers thank their editors profusely. And that's not for just line editing. And if you think about the great writers of thirty, forty, fifty years ago, they all had very close working relationships with their editors.
I've workshopped my novel and got plenty of very useful feedback at different stages of completion, most of which I incorporated into my revisions. I'm a very good editor, and there are people who pay *me* (chuckle chuckle, I never thought anyone would, but it just happened) to edit their work--these were people who sought me out, after reading my feedback and my stories. I never advertised.
But there's another level of editing. I believe some people are simply more talented in the way they can look at the *entire* novel, not at its parts. I always suspected this was the case, but I never had this experience myself until now.
I also feel that I learned a massive, absolutely massive amout of information by working with a professional editor and her individual attention to my novel. And this is on top of all the books I've read, courses, workshops.
But I think to gain this much from a professional editor, one has to approach the editor with a novel that is as ready as it is humanely possible. Which means, in many cases, workshopped, critiqued, put aside, critiqued again, and revised, revised, revised, and polished on top of that.
I've got a 1 and a 3.5 year old myself-- I know how hard it can be to carve out that extra time!
